Adult and Child
by OrigamiPaperAngel
Summary: Splendid x Giggles. Oneshot. All at once he knew that he would never settle for anyone less than her, for one does not consider the moon after having seen the sun, and his universe did indeed revolve around her. His girl. His woman. His own little lolita.


Author's Note: Okay, so first and foremost, I do not support pedophilia in any form. In fact, consider this an anti-pedophilia piece. Secondly, this is inspired by a Japanese comic titled, "Adult and Child," hence the title. I realize Giggles isn't a child, but while browsing Japanese HTF fan-art, I've realized that a lot of the time Giggles is portrayed as a prepubescent girl, especially when paired with Splendid. So, I wanted to explore that in a story.

Please, do not hesitate to provide any constructive criticism you have to offer. I promise I won't bite if you take the time to really tell me what you thought~ This is my first try writing a story of this nature—for lack of a better term—so I'd love to hear how you think it came out, such as what worked and what didn't.

Well then, I hope you enjoy, and if you would be so kind, please do review afterward and tell me what you thought! :)

* Splendid, Giggles, Happy Tree Friends and all related media are copyrighted to Mondo Media.

* * *

WARNING

This story contains the pairing of **Adult****!****Splendid x Child!Giggles**, use of foul language, and mature subject matter! If you are offended by such material, turn away now.

[You have been warned.]

* * *

_She's just a little girl,_ he thinks as he leaps from a branch and lands before her. She, the tiny nymphet with the red bow that sits brightly against short sakura-pink hair, a stark contrast against the pure white of her flowing dress. Her shiny black shoes are surrounded by dull-colored apples, dying fruits that the tall tree has purged from his branches.

She's wearing his favorite dress, and he wonders faintly if she had figured it out and wore it just for him. It is the dress he has taken off of her so many times in his dreams, though always gently so as not to hurt her, quietly worshiping the way the snowy fabric slides against her soft skin, slowly, so agonizingly _slowly_—

He is an adult. She is a child.

A child whose eyes tell him she's an adult, too.

* * *

"_A white carnation? Oh, thank you Splendid, it's lovely!"_

"_Ah, no problem. I thought of you when I saw it, so I wanted to give it to you... do you like it?"_

"_Yes, I love it! That was so sweet of you to think of me, but..."_

"_But?"_

"_Why did it make you think of me?"_

_He doesn't remember the answer he had given her – something about the flower being dainty and pretty, something he thought she'd like — but now he knows. The flower was white. Untouched. __Innocent. And because it caught his eye, he tore it from the ground for his own enjoyment. He would cripple it and because of him the flower would die far before its time, but he thought little of this. It was only a flower, after all. Who would care if it withered away?_

_It was perfect for her._

* * *

Her eyes are red_. _He's known her for almost a year now, but he never noticed — probably because he's never looked this closely at her before. She's never..._made _him look at her this closely before. Emotions and thoughts he doesn't recognize flicker across her blood-red eyes, like a newborn fire that threatens to catch his skin and burn him alive, like a witch tied to the stake.

He'd thought she had blue eyes, like his own, though hers would be a lighter shade, perhaps the color of the morning sky. Or maybe he thought they were brown, chocolaty and warm at all times except when they were broad with fear, like those of a deer in the headlights. It certainly would fit, considering how often he rescued her when she was on the verge of death.

But red? Red is the color of anger, violence, fire, blood...

… red is also the color for **passion**, he remembers. Love. And...

He doesn't want to think of it.

Lust.

No.

He doesn't want to think of her with the color red. He doesn't want her eyes to match the apples on the tree above them; he dislikes the bright crimson of her bow. She is pure, he thinks. Her dress is white, like the wool of a lamb, as should her bow be. And as should her _eyes_ be—everything about her should remind him of her purity, her youth. She is just a girl, and everything about her should serve to remind him of this.

But her eyes contradict her. Bloody and gleaming, they beg for him him to do something, but he silently refuses. Her fire can't reach his skies, no matter how high she leaps. She will never burn him; he will fly and fly until he is out of her reach. He is immune to her tricks, her temptations.

_What do you want? _He wonders hopelessly.

They stare at each other, his expression pleading and hers, calculating.

* * *

She is a lover. He remembers when he first gave her the white carnation; she held the pristine flower to her full pink lips and giggled, always full of happiness and love to share with everybody.

He is a hero. He thrives on helping others and he smiles when he sees her happy, though after their goodbyes his eyes might have lingered on her for a bit longer than necessary.

And they might have drifted down, to follow the sway of her lacy hem, side to side, like a clock, against her creamy skin.

She kept the carnation. For the rest of the day it stayed in her milky hands, never to depart. He saw her later on, talking to one of her friends. A boy, it was – and when the boy dared to touch her and taint her sweet cheek with his filth-coated hands, the hero may have narrowed his eyes and scraped his teeth together in hate.

And he may have thought of doing something not so heroic.

It is quite likely he imagined his hands wrapping around the little shit's neck, wringing the skin and digging his nails into the flesh until the body beneath him went limp. And with this mental image a malicious smile may have curled onto his lips. He might have thought that he would like to kill the boy—right in front of her, his little girl. His lover.

And shook his head furiously before taking off.

* * *

He knows her scream, now; he's memorized it by heart, so to distinguish her cries for salvation against those of the other women in the town, ones whose fates he truly couldn't care less for. He's found that the more his thoughts are plagued by the image of the lovely ten-year-old with her bright red bow and her white carnation, the more other women mean nothing to him. And how _could_ they? He could never settle for the moon.

Not after he has seen the sun.

(_His_ sun, his girl, his lover.)

He wakes up from dreams of kissing her to find her sleeping in his bed, her creamy dress hitched up so that the lace of the hem brushes her thigh, yet when he reaches to pet her, she has disappeared.

And when he bakes, he sees her sitting on the table, swinging her white legs, licking the batter from her fingers - catching his eye before closing her eyes and swiping her tongue slowly up and down, sensuously, yet when he blinks the mirage has faded before him.

She is cruel, he learns; she haunts him with her lanky legs and her silky hair and beckons him to come closer, only to vanish into the silence once he takes his first step forward. Only, once he has finished rubbing his eyes and turns to move along, she appears again in an even more compromising position than the last, dangling herself above him like a treat a pitiless owner dangles before a gaunt and starving dog, keeping the biscuit just out of reach and with no intention of alleviating the sharp hunger.

* * *

He knows her scream, now; he's memorized it by heart, so to distinguish her cries for salvation against those of the other women in the town, ones whose fates he truly couldn't care less for. He's found that the more his thoughts are plagued by the image of the lovely ten-year-old with her bright red bow and her white carnation, the more other women mean nothing to him. And how _could_ they? He could never settle for the moon.

Not after he has seen the sun.

(_His_ sun, his girl, his lover.)

He wakes up from dreams of kissing her to find her sleeping in his bed, her creamy dress hitched up so that the lace of the hem brushes her thigh, yet when he reaches to pet her, she has disappeared.

And when he bakes, he sees her sitting on the table, swinging her white legs, licking the batter from her fingers - catching his eye before closing her eyes and swiping her tongue slowly up and down, sensuously, yet when he blinks the mirage has faded before him.

She is cruel, he learns; she haunts him with her lanky legs and her silky hair and beckons him to come closer, only to vanish into the silence once he takes his first step forward. Only, once he has finished rubbing his eyes and turns to move along, she appears again in an even more compromising position than the last, dangling herself above him like a treat a pitiless owner dangles before an gaunt and starving dog, keeping the biscuit just out of reach and with no intention of alleviating the sharp hunger.

And so, for the majority of the day's typical crow-like caws for helps, he has closed whatever window he's been nearest to and resumed to baking his bread, an activity quite preferable to swooping in to save large, muddy women whose mighty bosoms heave with pants for fear, leaving him with the impression that he has just rescued an ape, rather than a lady.

But when _she_ calls for him, he drops his pan to the door and tears out of his house as if he were being chased by the hounds of hell.

Once he has her in his arms and returns her to solid ground far away from the sea's jagged rocks she had been plummeting towards at a breakneck pace, it feels as though he is carrying an angel in his arms, for she is as delicate as a feather and as light as a golden ray of sun. She is so unlike the women of the town, with their grotesque, waddling bodies and wriggling fat, their awkward largeness and the complete, utter lack of the grace and purity that repulses him to his very core.

He holds her closer than necessary, and still it isn't close enough. He settles for cradling her as tightly as he can without crushing her bones and making her body go limp beneath him. He knows that he could. He's done it before.

Now he focuses all he has on protecting the goddess in his arms, and when her feet graze the ground he does not hasten to let her go.

"Thank you," she murmurs as his hands return to their rightful place by his sides. He must be respectful. Keep his distance.

His fingers twitch when she looks down and asks him to meet her here later on in the afternoon today. Her eyes are tied to the ground, but he doesn't miss the roses in her cheeks when she turns around and leaves without another word.

She has left before he had the chance to drop to his knees, clutch her torso and bury his head in her dress, assuring her he'd like nothing else in the world better.

It bothers him a bit, but then again, his darling _is_ a tremendous tease.

* * *

Learning that his sweetheart has a sentimental side comes as no surprise to him, yet he hadn't expected her to remember the exact location of _their_ tree- the one he gave her the white flower under. The tree, so bright and green the morning he handed her the fragile plant, is now cloaked in the dark light of the quickly fading sky. Shadows are slowly creeping up, but still he can see her with a perfect clarity.

Even now the carnation sits among the strands of her pink hair, a fleck of delicate white that clashes with her dark red eyes- how ironic, that he would notice only now that her eyes were the same color as the fire inside of him? Could it be that there a fire inside of her, too?

And he can't help but wonder: did his eyes appear also red in the slowly fading light of the afternoon sky?

Was she a girl, really? Or was she a woman? What was the difference? Did it even matter?

He thought he was an adult, but he'd be a boy if that meant he could be with her. The more he thought about it, the less he cared.

It is just the two of them, him and her. He takes a step forward.

If he loves her, why would it matter? She takes a step back.

There couldn't be anything wrong with it. As long as there is love. Love is good. Love is pure.

_(But why is she stepping backwards?)_

Her back hits the tree, and he lunges forward.

* * *

Seconds later, his bloodshot eyes snap open, and he pulls back, panting.

**Fuck**.

The phrase_, I am a ma_n, rattles somewhere in the back of his mind. A Boy, he is. He looks at her, his eyes stained red to match the blood on his lower lip, looking down at her with apprehension.

_I am a girl, _whisper the crimson droplets as they seep from where he bit her lips. They crawl down her flesh and tremble at her chin. But she is a Woman.

Is. Was. The details hurt his head, and it feels like she has taken out one of her crayons and used his brain for a canvas, for his thoughts are all scribbles and he can't form a coherent thought.

All he knows is that her once fiery eyes are as cold as rubies, and they stare at him in silent accusation.

* * *

She keeps the carnation, even though it is now brown at the edges and even though the man who gave it to her has stormed off without so much as a word or a glance back. She stares out at the harsh light for a long time after his footsteps fade away, but eventually she bends her head down and brings the flower to her lips, marking it with their blood.

* * *

**End**.

* * *

Author's Note: In case you're interested, here is the URL for the Japanese comic that inspired this (remove the spaces; for whatever reason, takes away the www & website name) - www . pixiv member_?mode=big&illust_id=25838129.

And secondly: Review, review, review! :)


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